busy times

despite me keeping space

marking time here and not there

i am busy.

 washing the rugs

 a short stack for india

 color

 colour

 sky

 wendy continues to run 

i said run! 

 a little dyepot with bundles

 maples and others

 spotlit

 a sunbleached fenceline

 my poem for the bloodroot and violet book

home from the show

 one of the bundles 

linen and paper

silk from that pot

we are like seeddown

silky

windblown

fruit.

october richness

i've been

watching carefully the i am ai, we are ai project led by 

rowland ricketts

and the natural colours exhibition
that i wish i could attend

and then there's all the energy

at the morgan this week

and i go back to this...

remembering what asao taught

in syracuse

and i smile.

it's good to have limitations, yes?

i do however, have the newest mary oliver

a thousand mornings to 

savor.

i will take words and wendy  

and enjoy my everyday

everydays.

(milkweed and silk) 

friday photos

sugar

maple

tea bank

neighbor

west

there was snow in the air

it was windy, too

milkweed pops up in the strangest places!
(it's right between the boards)

yesterday i harvested

milkweed, earlier than usual

following melissa (and marilyn's) advice.

working with a master

in 1997 i attended a wonderful workshop

given by asao shimura at carriage house

we worked with pina

so 

when aimee lee told me asao 

was coming to the u.s.

and I found that he would be teaching in syracuse

i asked holly greenberg about it 

and received a gracious invitation to

sit in on the class.

so i drove down yesterday

 asao creates magic: a table full of color
(pigments, dyes)

 placed  by asao shimura

master papermaker

 who is on his kon'nyaku tour

from new york to syracuse to cleveland to iowa city

 so we ogled the dyes and pigments he prepared

and used them

asao wearing pina shifu

up close

asao clothed in shifu with dyed paper yarns

bengara (for jean)

holly and a sutra by asao

printing 

kon'nyaku thickened pigments and dyes

holly's papermaking students got to play

with the "paste"

genevieve nordmark
a lover of hand papermaking
and a friend 
who may find her way to my mill sometime soon

some of her lovely paper

working into her paper with kon'nyaku and pigment

coating sheets with kon'nyaku

the lime cook

a short immersion

rinse and dry

printing blocks

and a final note:
pina spun paper, colors to dye for.
i almost jumped over the table for these treasures.
it was a good day.
making marks, making friends.

a few more

 stitches

 now 

on paper

 dyed lokta

 on disheveled 

bleached abaca

 some little lines

dashes and dashes

 some knots or not

on that linen sleeve.

the paper is a page from a book of thoughts.

the cloth has yet

to become its own story.

a long way still to go.